First Black School in Williamsburg Moved

According to an article published by WRIC Last Friday February 10th, 2023, The Bray School, the oldest school dedicated to educating African American children was relocated from the William and Mary campus to Colonial Williamsburg. The Streets were lined with hundreds of people celebrating the school’s slow journey to the heart of the living history museum in Colonial Williamsburg which tells the story of Viriginia’s History through restored buildings and interpreters. The college and foundation on Friday commemorated the buildings move and it’s often overlooked history during a ceremony attended by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Colonial Williamsburg Ceo and President Cliff Fleet and Williamsburg Mayor Doug Pons.

The WRIC article explains the moving of the Bray School is part of an ongoing effort from Colonial Williamsburg to tell stories from African American history and the nation’s origin story. Until 1979 the museum did not tell African American stories despite being founded in 1926. In 2021, the brick foundation of one of the nation’s oldest African American churches was uncovered, last year archeologists began to excavate graves at the sight. The Bray School’s new location is right next to that site.

For many people especially African Americans the Bray School stirs up many mixed emotions. Tonia Merideth, the oral historian for the Bray School, says in the article published by WRIC that the building was material proof that the narrative of our ancestors being illiterate and dumb was untrue. She says, “Everything that I learned about my ancestors was wrong. They could learn. They did learn. They were able.”. It means so much to many African Americans that the harmful narrative that’s been perpetuated from a bias teaching of slavery and long-standing stereotypes has material proof against it. For historians the existence of the Bray School contradicts the idea that all enslaved Africans were uneducated and illiterate. The school’s curriculum, however, was heavily faith based. Being created by and English charity the teachings encouraged learning but also twisted and contorted the bible to justify slavery and accept their fate as a part of god’s plan. This miseducation was used to keep slaved under control just as much as it was used to make the enslaved educated. Mauren Elgersman Lee, director of William and Mary’s Bray School Lab perfectly sums up the intent of the school when saying “Religion was sat the heart of the school, and it was not a gospel of abolition,”. Lee continues to say “Save the soul but continue to enslave the body. It was the here versus the hereafter.” which is downright sinister but a cruel reality of enslaved people in the United States.

The WRIC article goes on to say The Colonial Williamsburg Foundations and William and Mary were responsible for uncovering the identity of the building through a scientific method known as dendrochronology using the tree rings in lumber to determine the woods harvest date. It is incredibly important to put the building back to its original state to know the full truth of the story. The Bray School has so much to tell us about our nation’s history and the many people who shaped it. The school was established in 1760 with the combined efforts of a philanthropist Reverend Thomas Bray’s London based charity. Other schools were also established in New York and Philadelphia.

The Bray’s School and other schools like it are important pieces of Black history.